{"id":66503,"date":"2018-12-03T05:55:41","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T12:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=66503"},"modified":"2018-12-03T06:19:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T13:19:19","slug":"pissed-off-bald-eagle-giving-me-the-finger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/03\/pissed-off-bald-eagle-giving-me-the-finger\/","title":{"rendered":"Pissed Off Bald Eagle Giving Me The Finger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yup, that’s what I said.<\/p>\n

I took this shot nine years ago and never opened the image until last night (I’m probably going to catch hell from readers\u00a0for that…). It had\u00a0three surprises waiting for me when I finally saw it full screen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM + EF 1.4 Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The photo was taken at Farmington with one of my first digital cameras on February 19, 2009 as the eagle was coming in to\u00a0land next to a shallow pond. In the\u00a0small preview image\u00a0of the\u00a0original file there’s a hunter’s parking lot just below the bird (at the point where I’ve cropped the image at the bottom) and I\u00a0thought it was so ugly and so close to the bird I figured the photo was garbage and never opened the thumbnail until last night\u00a0to look at the entire image full screen.<\/p>\n

I should have. Not only was there\u00a0enough room between the eagle and the\u00a0parking lot to crop the ugliness out and still have decent composition\u00a0there were also two more surprises waiting for me.<\/p>\n

The eagle was banded. The only other banded Bald Eagle I ever remember photographing was one in my elm tree in\u00a0the side yard of my home\u00a0some years ago<\/a>. At first I actually wondered if they could be the same bird\u00a0but the bands are on opposite legs. I’m not fond of bands in my photos\u00a0but I have mixed feelings about bird banding for other reasons too (I’m actually considering doing a post on that subject – we’ll see). I tried to read the band numbers but cannot.<\/p>\n

But the second surprise was one I enjoyed a lot more.\u00a0The eagle was giving me the one-finger salute –\u00a0“the bird” from a bird, so to speak. Combined with the stink-eye it was giving me because it thought I\u00a0might\u00a0be too close to its intended landing spot I’m highly amused.<\/p>\n

Maybe\u00a0it knew\u00a0I\u00a0wouldn’t appreciate the jewelry on its leg and took offense, I dunno…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yup, that’s what I said.<\/p>\n

I took this shot nine years ago and never opened the image until last night (I’m probably going to catch hell from readers for that…). It had three surprises waiting for me when I finally saw it full screen.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[355,5,334,2782],"tags":[24,43,1008,400,3750,311],"class_list":["post-66503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bald-eagles","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-adult","tag-bald-eagle","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-haliaeetus-leucocephalus","tag-the-finger","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/bald-eagle-2076-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-hiD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}